Workstation 17.5.0: (enhanced?) keyboard driver problem

[Korbinian]

Hi,

this is for anyone having the same trouble after upgrading to 17.5.0; I did the standard in place upgrade, and - as allways- installed the enhanced keyboard driver.

After that I started up my vm and did some work in IDEA. Shortly after I edited some code at once a whole line got erased instead of just 1 click on the remove key. You could literally see the line beeing draged leftwards and dissapear letter by letter.... At first I was ok... well.. wtf... after 2 mins the same again. I rebooted my laptop and restarted my work. Suddenly after 4 mins the whole system removes line by line and this time it even didnt let me use my own keyboard anymore... didnt stop... and tried to delete further even after the code file was already empy (thanks git... no worries here 😄 ). Also the whole system hung without beeing able to press any key - only way out was a complete hard reset of the hardware.

I tried to fix this for some time but only after I did a complete uninstall and reinstall with reboots and lefting out the "enhanced keyboard driver" the problem seems gone.

So, if you have any problems with your computer typing or deleting on its own: get rid of the "enhanced keyboard driver"!

For Vmware in case you're interested:

Betriebsystemname Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
Systemhersteller Dell Inc.
Systemmodell Precision 7760
Prozessor Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3187 MHz, 6 Kern(e), 12 logische(r) Prozessor(en)
BIOS-Version/-Datum Dell Inc. 1.23.0, 07.06.2023
Installierter physischer Speicher (RAM) 64,0 GB

[AdamTher]

Does VMware supply vmtools for Linux? Because if not (I don't think they do) they sort of have to make sure its compatible to say its supported.

Frankly this makes me worry about the future and the brand damage to VMware isn't small here. Many of us manage hypervisor farms and just arnt posting on our corporate accounts as its not related to the actual support contract.

[NCoppersmith76]

I can duplicate this instantly after updating to 17.5. Upgraded guests, all running Linux. Kubuntu 22.04, Kali, Blackbuntu 22.04. I noticed some extreme lag with the keyboard where it'll "buffer" an insane number of keypresses in the console, so don't hold down backspace or anything working with text.  But as soon as you try to copy/paste between host (windows 11) and guest (any of the linux distros) the keyboard/mouse completely stop working and the only way to fix (I've found so far) is to do a reset from the power options.  I have the enhanced keyboard driver installed and configured on my guests as I thought that was the solution to the behavior, but alas, it appears to be a 17.5 issue. I haven't tried updating the vmtools yet, but I think I'm going to try uninstalling/reinstalling Workstation 17.5 without the enhanced keyboard driver first.

[wila]

Hi,

A few notes.

1) Don't install the enhanced keyboard driver.. especially NOT if you don't even know what it does.

From my notes:

jameslin: " The primary purpose of the host keyboard driver is to allow Ctrl+Alt+Del and Win+L to work from within the guest OS without it being intercepted by the Windows host OS.

The secondary purpose is to handle international keyboards better. "

from : What exactly is the enhanced keyboard driver?

9 out of 10 you don't care that these keys are intercepted by the host OS... and the international keyboard support isn't that much better (if at all)

2) Make sure that you are using VMware's hypervisor and not just the Hyper-V API's.. which is what will happen by default on a lot of Windows installs now. Of course there might be a reason for you to run Hyper-V, but there's a lot of complaints nowadays that things don't work as they used to.. without realizing that they are running under a different hypervisor.

--
Wil

[tomastokamrazek]

I can confirm this.

I replicated it several times by holding right arrow in text field, when I tried to scroll the text. Several times in DBeaver, several times in IDEA. Started right after updating to 17.5.0.

Linux Mint 21.2

[Korbinian]

Hi,

@wila 

Honestly I used the enhanced keyboard driver since workstation 5 or 6? I allways installed it whenever I did a workstation install, never cared and never had problems before. The install dialog just makes you feel it is better this way....

Regarding the hyper-v: well, Im now fine since I uninstalled all and have no keyboard driver. I didnt have another lockup or problem so far the last days, only the copy-n-paste is a tad slower than expected but we talk sub seconds here.... I really would like to get rid of hyper-v but I just cant since I also use WSL2 and podman so you end up needing it. Can you explain why vmware cant use its own virtualization when hyper-v is installed? Why cant it run side-by-side?

[wila]

Hi,

---

@Korbinian wrote:

Hi,

@wila 

I really would like to get rid of hyper-v but I just cant since I also use WSL2 and podman so you end up needing it. Can you explain why vmware cant use its own virtualization when hyper-v is installed? Why cant it run side-by-side?

---

That's because of the way Hyper-V works. Basically it changes how the host OS runs, the host OS will run as a special kind of VM and as such the VMware hypervisor no longer gets direct access to all hardware features that it requires in order to be able to function.
More info at:
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/05/vmware-workstation-now-supports-hyper-v-mode.html
and https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/17/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-177F1E77-BFFD-485F...

An alternative way to run WSL2 and podman is to run those in a guest with the VMware hypervisor enabled. The nesting support with VMware's hypervisor is really excellent.
Having said that, it might not be what you need.

--
Wil

[ssill2]

having this problem also after upgrading to 17.5

[Guido3]

I seem to have the same problem here. 

My host is:
Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 22H2
OS build 19045.3570
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19052.1000.0

VM ware:
VMware® Workstation 17 Pro
17.5.0 build-22583795

The virtual machine with open-vm-tools installed and latest updates:
Fedora release 38

I'm using it for software development and what seems to happen is that everything appears to stop responding, but what really happens is that the virtual machine is still running, but it just won't respond to input anymore. I can still SSH into the machine, it just won't register mouse clicks or keyboard actions anymore. I found no workaround for this other than letting VM workstation shutdown the machine and reboot and in the process lose unsaved work! The frequency of this happening is also not predictable. It may happen after working 5 hours without any issues, but it can also happen much faster, like within one hour. 

As you can imagine, losing unsaved files and having to reboot is rather inconvenient. I hope that this is fixed soon. I am considering downgrading to VMware workstation 7.0.0, but I doubt that I can downgrade at this point, since I ran the encrypted disk updater. So perhaps it's time to restore an older backup along with VMware 7.0.0, but then that will make me hesitant to ever up again!

[pnetlab]

Just to add a me too. 

I tried to work witch 1 core 1 cpu and the keyboard not fails, but for the code compilation is a mess!

I tried to work in RDP and the keyboard not fails, but this is not a solution!

My guest is a Debian 12. 

Please fix it!

[behm015]

UPDATE: 

I downgraded from 17.5.0 back to 17.0.2 (old  installers can be found under %APPDATA%/../Local/VMware/)

Even if you have upgraded your VM with the migration tool to have hardware compatibility with 17.5.x, you can use that exact same tool for downgrading to 17.0.x again.

If you have a host shared folder(s) mounted, those will be disabled upon upgrading or downgrading, making your VM fail to boot up.

You can enable your shared folder again in your VM settings in order to fix the bootup.

Alternatively you can edit /etc/fstab in rescue mode (the line pointing to your shared folder mount point). 

[pnetlab]

Update: 

I also disable Hyper-V, but the issues continues. 

Mouse and keyboard restarts to work only after downgrade to 17.0.2

[ssill2]

Knock on wood, I've not seen this issue since going into settings of each of my VMs, Options->General, and setting "Enhanced Keyboard" to "off"

[mysterylie]

I'm downgrading, too. You can find the file on your system (assuming you didn't prune it) starting with:  VMware-workstation-full-17.0.2

I never had Hyper-V enabled (previous issues with VirtualBox had me turn that off years ago). I _did_ install the enhanced keyboard driver because I, like many others, thought enhanced = better. I think this is not the case. However, even after removing the keyboard driver (which was a real pain because you need admin rights to modify things, and the control panel > add/remove programs doesn't give you this by default) and rebooting the issue persists.

Specifically, I'm running into this issue across 3 debian-based VMs. Everything works normally for a few minutes but then it looks like I have an infinite key glitch where the same character is repeated until I hard-stop or reboot the machine. I caught this by being in a terminal when it happened, but otherwise it just looks like everything is frozen and no input works.

Rolling back has solved the issue completely (and I shan't be installing any "enhancements" again any time soon!)

[Guido3]

Maybe some extra information.. my enhanced keyboard IS off.. and hyper-v is also not installed. Today it ran fine all morning.. then stopped working in the afternoon. When it freezes, num-lock is not responding anymore either. The key cursor is still blinking.

In an attempt to figure out what parameters are influencing the freezing, I will enable the enhanced keyboard in the VM, since I did install it after doing a clean VM ware workstation 7.5.0 install but left it disabeld in the VM. Just note that it was also freezing when the enhanced keyboard driver wasn't even installed with VM ware.

[wila]

---

@Guido3 wrote:

.. and hyper-v is also not installed.

---

When people say "Hyper-V is not installed" I never know what they mean or if they are aware on how this works.
You don't need to install Hyper-V in order for VMware Workstation to use the Windows Hyper-V API's.

Check the vmware.log file of your VM for the words "monitor mode".

If it says "ULM" then you are using the Hyper-V API's. Only when it says "CPL0" you are using VMware's hypervisor.

--
Wil

[Guido3]

Hi @wila ,

I'm sorry, I was not aware that the API's are separate from the 'feature install hyper-v', thank you  for clarifying!

I did look it up and it says:

In(05) vmx Monitor Mode: CPL0

[mysterylie]

Yeah, fair point. I meant that all the boxes next to Hyper-V are unchecked in the "Turn windows features on or off" dialog.

[wila]

@Guido3that's clear. You're using VMware's hypervisor, I guess that excludes finger pointing to Microsofts hypervisor for this issue.

@mysteryliesadly that still doesn't mean you're using VMware's hypervisor, I wish it was that clear cut.

--
Wil

[mysterylie]

Fascinating, thanks for the info. Do you know how I can disable it once and for all? Not seeing details in the VMWare announcement or docs about how to disable it, they basically just say "if you're using it VMWare Workstation Pro will work".

Microsoft's own docs just point to the thing I used. I've also run the command these mention.

[wila]

Hi,

There's a Knowledge base article somewhere, but I don't have the link ready. Lately I tend to point people to the following forum post as it seems pretty complete.
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Disabling-Hyper-V-hypervisor-on-Windows-11-...

--
Wil